


Return to Dale

by StarSpray



Category: The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Back to Middle-Earth Month, Character Study, Dale - Freeform, Ficlet, Gen, Post-Canon, Textual Ghosts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-23
Updated: 2019-03-23
Packaged: 2019-11-29 00:01:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18215441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarSpray/pseuds/StarSpray
Summary: Dale's new queen takes a look at the city.





	Return to Dale

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2019 Back to Middle-earth Month Bingo, for the prompt "Wife of Bard I" on the Textual Ghosts card, "The City" on the Setting as Character card, and the prompts "Royal" and "Imagination" on the Color Burst: Purple card.
> 
> I have used the names Sigrid and Tilda for Ema and Bard's daughters in this fic, but the names are the only resemblance anyone in this fic bears to the films; this is bookverse.

Ema picked her way carefully through the cracked and crumbling streets, trying to imagine them whole again, with homes and shops and towers lining them. A raven perched on the half-fallen wall of one such ancient tower, watching her with sharp dark eyes. In the distance she heard workers calling to one another—Dwarves and Men, mostly, those from Laketown who had followed Bard back here to Dale.

They were already calling him King. Which of course made her a queen, and it was so strange: she was a seamstress, the daughter of a fishmonger and a midwife, and had been, she thought, the wife of a mere huntsman. Not the sort of woman you might expect to find at the founding of a new royal house.

She made her way up out of the city onto one of the arms of the mountain. From there she could see the lake, but it was a glimmer in the distance. Around her the wind blew through charred heather and over blackened stones. There was no lapping of water against wooden pillars or boats; no splashing of fish; no water birds gliding overhead or calling to one another on the reedy banks. This was the desolation of the dragon, and Ema didn't at all like the thought of living here. Queen of the burned heath, she was. With a sigh she sank down onto a smaller, flat boulder. From here she could see the workers clearing away a portion of the city, and farther up the mountain the dwarves were busy as bees.

Along the river, between Dale and the Long Lake, she could see others moving about. Elves, perhaps, trying to awaken the land to new life now that the dragon was gone. Ema had always liked the Elves; they were cheerful and always singing when they came to Laketown. Dwarves she was less sure about.

Ema also had a good view of the city itself, and could see how it had been laid out, a neat patchwork of wide avenues, now overgrown, but still visible. She imagined there had once been smaller alleys and side streets in between, but the ruined buildings obscured them now. It was a far cry from Laketown, with its twisting gangplanks and rope bridges, some sturdier than others, built where and when a new one was needed with no real thought to any patterns or order. She had gotten turned around herself even the night the dragon had come, and it was only by luck that she'd chosen the right bridge to take her back to Bain and the girls in time to escape to the shore.

She shuddered, sitting now in the sunlight, on the doorstep of Smaug's lair. But thoughts of dragon fire and burning timber were banished by the calls of her children as they appeared out of the ruins, waving to her to come look at what they had found. Smaug had taken all of the gold and silver and gemstones of Dale, but had left behind more ordinary things, and Bain and Sigrid and Tilda had already quite a collection of pottery fragments, and even whole vessels, among other things like glass beads and old wooden toys that had somehow survived the years.

Ema got to her feet and made her way back down the hill to meet them and see what they had found. In the distance, a bell began to ring.


End file.
